


Colluding with the Oppressor (or: We're all mad here)

by purple01_prose



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Dark, Depression, F/M, Mental Illness, PTSD, Stream of Consciousness, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-11
Updated: 2012-08-11
Packaged: 2017-11-11 21:14:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/482963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purple01_prose/pseuds/purple01_prose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry had been so, so brilliant and charming.</p>
<p>She hadn't seen the other parts of him. Or maybe she hadn't wanted to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Colluding with the Oppressor (or: We're all mad here)

Lucy was born on a rare bright October day in London. She’d never heard why her parents named her ‘Lucy,’ only that they thought it was a pretty name, suiting a pretty girl.

 

Lucy was always a pretty girl.

 

\--

 

She grew up when feminism was just beginning to take hold in the United Kingdom. She took women’s studies classes at uni, thought them interesting, but fundamentally got her degree in business management, and went to work for a publishing firm in London.

 

She didn’t vote for Thatcher.

 

\--

 

She met Harry Saxon when he met with an editor and his agent. She was there to take notes for Legal, noted the way he smiled and laughed without really smiling and laughing at all. At the end of the meeting, when the editor and the agent were talking about possible sales, he took her hand and brushed the top of it with his lips, said, in a voice much more suited for a 1940s’  _noir_ film, “Pleasure to meet you, Hon. Cole.”

 

“It’s just Lucy,” she’d told him then, flustered and trying to hide it. He saw it, though, and smirked at her in a way that said he’d gotten exactly what he wanted.

 

They arranged to meet for lunch the following week.

 

\--

 

Lunch dates turned into dinner dates, and dinner dates turned into staying the night, and then one day she woke up and realized she’d moved in with him, without ever being the wiser for it. Still, he greeted her with coffee—just the way she liked it—along with some fresh fruit she had frankly no idea how he got at this time of year, wrapped in a sheet, and she realized she didn’t mind.

 

Then he told her he was running for Defence Minister, and would she please marry him?

 

She’d told him yes without a second thought.

 

\--

 

After he won, he showed her a blue police box, and asked if she wanted to go somewhere. She said yes—she always trusted Harry—and he took her to the end of the universe.

 

The absolute  _nothingness_ took her breath away, and it was there, in the shadows of the dying universe, that he’d took her hands and asked if she wanted to change the world with him, make it a better one.

 

She’d never been able to say no to Harry.

 

\--

 

After that, he ran for—and won—Prime Minister. She knew what he was planning, and it left her with a secret sense of glee that she knew something no one else did, that she and Harry were going to change the world, and  _no one could stop them_.

 

Not even the Doctor.

 

Harry had told her all about him, oh yes he had, right down to that the Doctor had had the choice to let his planet and people die, and he did, and Harry had been left alone at the end of the universe, no people, no planet, only the destroyer of his people for company in the great wide nowhere.

 

“I was in an old body there,” he’d spun her around in the parlor of their home to a waltz, “I like this one much better, and I know you do too,” he’d added with a leer, and she had to kiss him then, because Harry was always charming, but when he became flirtatious, it was too much charisma to stand.

 

Sometimes she wondered about what exactly they were doing, especially when people like Vivien Rook talked to her, but then Harry took her hand and kissed the top of it, exactly like he had when they had first met, and she fell back in love with him every time.

 

She could always trust Harry.

 

\--

 

Then UNIT created the  _Valiant_ —right name for it was trying to do—and the President was shot, and Lucy felt a thrill all the way down to her toes as she and Harry held up the Doctor to show him what was happening to his beloved Earth, all because the Doctor hadn’t made the right decision and saved Gallifrey.

 

“Gallifrey sounds like a name out of a fairy tale,” she’d said to Harry when he described it.

 

“Then who am I?” he asked rakishly, but there was a glint in his eyes, something that warned her about giving the wrong answer.

 

She’d leaned over and kissed him, pressing her breasts against him in that way he liked. “You’re my prince, come to rescue me from my ivory tower of upholding the family name and the minutiae of business management.”

 

He’d tugged on her, and not much got done in the next few hours.

 

The Doctor had cried silently, watching the Toclafane rain down fire on the Earth while that blasted Martha Jones got off somewhere, and Harry’s victory over the Doctor had been rendered incomplete.

 

Still, watching the Doctor sob without making a sound, Lucy wondered briefly if they were doing the right thing, but Harry smiled at her, and she knew she trusted him, so of course they were doing the right thing.

 

Then Harry found out about Captain Jack’s immortality.

 

\--

 

In the beginning, it had seemed like fun, to try to figure out ways to kill Captain Jack. She’d never been present, but she and Harry talked possibilities and gossiped over the failures.

 

Then Harry became angry that Captain Jack wouldn’t die, that somehow Captain Jack had the power of the Vortex inside him, but not the Vortex as Harry and the Doctor knew it to be. He became cruel.

 

She’d been wandering in the lower decks that day, and saw Harry strike Captain Jack over and over again with an electric cattle prod. She’d cringed back from Captain Jack’s cries, and when Harry had returned to their bedchamber, she’d asked him, tremulously, if he could give Captain Jack a rest for a few days.

 

Harry had gotten so very angry, demanding to know if she had slept with Captain Jack, and that’s where the newfound sympathy for the freak had come from.

 

She’d stammered out a no, only that it couldn’t be as fun when Captain Jack was tired from dying all the time, and wouldn’t his responses be more delicious when he was well-rested? Harry had calmed down and taken her into his arms, apologizing for his harsh words, but as he clutched her to him, stroking her long hair, she’d illogically wondered,  _where could I have slept with him without **anyone** finding out? You keep him chained up all the time!_

She’d let Harry initiate sex that night, trying very hard not to think about Harry’s love for sudden violence, and what that might mean to her.

 

\--

 

Then Harry burned Japan to the ground in the hopes of killing one girl, one slip of a girl who wasn’t special in any way, only that she was valuable to the Doctor, and that was good enough for Harry.

 

\--

 

Lucy knew that Mrs. Jones, and the girl—Tish—disdained her, Lucy in her pretty red silk dresses while they were forced to wear maid clothes’ and wait on Harry’s every whim, knew that they thought she was colluding with the oppressor.

 

Colluding with the oppressor—that was a term she’d last heard in her women’s studies classes.

 

She’d been to Japan before the start of all of this, met the Prime Minister. He had been a nice man, with three children, and he was proud of them in his own way.

 

In the footage that Harry had brought up for all them to ‘enjoy,’ including Captain Jack, a rare respite from the constant chains and torture, she had seen the Prime Minister clutching his youngest daughter to him as the Toclafane cackled and killed him, drawing out the death of the girl because they could.

 

She saw children screaming as they burned.

 

She felt a trickle of dampness on her cheek and raised a hand to it—tears.

 

It was a shock.

 

_Tears_.

 

It was the first time she’d cried in years.

 

\--

 

That night, as Harry raged and raged that his beloved children, his beloved Toclafane, could not be counted on to kill  _one_ girl, he turned that anger on her as she cringed in the shadows of their bedroom.

 

His face had twisted when she flinched away from him, and before she could react, his fist flew out and hit her in the face, and she toppled backwards, cracking her head on the edge of the bed. Blood streamed from a cut under her eye, and her head rang with pain.

 

He’d clutched her to him, begging forgiveness for losing control, it would never happen again, here, let him get the first aid kit. She’d let him tend to her, eyes vacant and staring.

 

No, it would never happen again.

 

She would never care for him again.

 

\--

 

After that, she refused to have sex with him. He had grown fond of it, despite the fact that it wasn’t normal on Gallifrey, and when she refused two nights in a row, he grew angry—it was so easy to get him angry these days—and he hit her again, and this time, when she curled into a ball at the foot of the bed, bruises forming around her neck from where he’d choked her, he hardly noticed her as he stormed from the room.

 

There was pity in the eyes of the UNIT soldiers the following morning, but Lucy held her head high, damning the Master with every bruise and cut on her skin. She might not be able to fight back, but she could defy him.

 

\--

 

The Master began to make the Doctor live in a tent in the conference room and eat from a bowl. He aged him, just because he could.

 

Lucy wondered how she had never seen his cruelty before.

 

\--

 

She wandered down to the lower decks again, this time on purpose. The entire ship had come to the conclusion she was mentally vacant thanks to all the time spent in the Master’s company, and it was true to some extent—she lived mostly in her head these days. But today she had a purpose.

 

The Master had fed Captain Jack a slow-acting poison, but he’d gotten bored of watching the Captain writhe in agony as the poison ate at his insides, and he had departed. Lucy appeared before him, peering up at him.

 

In the course of a year, Captain Jack had gotten tremendously filthy, and there were still visible tracks from when he’d cried over the fact that two of his team had died. Lucy felt for a moment like she could have cleaned him completely—absolve herself and cleanse him of this dank hell in one fell swoop—but the Master would never have allowed it.

 

He would kill Captain Jack and make her watch, and then he would hurt her in their bedroom.

 

Instead, she offered him a sweet. His eyes narrowed.

 

“What?”

 

His voice sounded rusty, but then, she thought distantly, he used it for mostly screaming these days.

 

“Poison,” she said softly, her eyes wandering all over this dark cell. It wasn’t fitting for him. The chains, the dirt, the ignominy. Captain Jack deserved better. “It’ll be faster, but he’ll never know that it wasn’t the first one.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Why any of this?” she echoed. “Because pain…becomes too much.”

 

There was a strange flickering in those blue eyes, still vibrant despite the filth around them, and he opened his mouth. She placed the sweet in, petting his cheek absently, and then she turned to go.

 

“Wait,” he called after her. She turned around. The light was already fading from his eyes, but he managed, “Thanks.”

 

She smiled at him, the first true smile she’d given anyone in months, and then she wandered away.

 

\--

 

She wasn’t colluding with the oppressor. She was simply…biding her time.

 

\--

 

And then things ended very quickly.

 

\--

 

Martha Jones had been found, and she was to die at the fated hour of New Gallifrey, but then she promised a way that the Master could be defeated, and Lucy saw her opportunity. As the entire deck of the  _Valiant_ chanted “Doctor,” she looked straight into the Master’s eyes, and mouthed, “Doctor,” over and over again, imagining the Doctor victorious, the Master defeated, and the Prime Minister of Japan back with his children, proud of their accomplishments and beaming when his oldest son graduated university.

 

She saw the Doctor rejuvenated and revitalized from the influx of psychic energy, saw him take down the Master, and then they teleported to Earth, and then back to the _Valiant_ , and Captain Jack was destroying that awful paradox machine, and time was slotting back into it’s normal place.

 

Yet her memories remained, but she knew it was for the best.

 

She couldn’t stand loving the Master again.

 

The Master tried to make a run for it, only to be caught by Captain Jack, and Lucy thought she maybe fell in love a little with him then. If there was anyone who could ensure the Master would pay for his crimes against humanity, his genocide, his  _human rights violations_ , it would be the Doctor and Captain Jack.

 

Wait, why was the Doctor saying that the Master would go live with him now? Why was he taking the gun from Mrs. Jones’ hands? Why?

 

_Why?_

Unnoticed by all, she picked up the still-loaded, still-cocked gun, and looked at it. For a moment, she visualized herself walking to the front, pushing past the Doctor, Martha Jones, and Mrs. Jones, taking front and center and proclaiming that the Master, nee Harold Saxon, was charged with and found guilty of committing genocide, war crimes, and general crimes against humanity, and that she, Lucy Saxon, nee Cole, would happily serve as his executioner.

 

It was a little melodramatic, she admitted to herself, and she’d never been the melodramatic sort.

 

Instead, she just took aim and squeezed off two shots.

 

\--

 

Captain Jack had disarmed her, his blue eyes sad. She’d let him take the gun, watching the Doctor cradle the Master against his chest and cry. “How?” was all she managed to get out, thinking of everything that had happened in the Year That Never Was.

 

“He’s been alone for a very long time.” Captain Jack answered quietly, but she could see he didn’t understand either. She almost wanted to reach out and touch him, but it wasn’t her place.

 

_He_  never could have done this without her.

 

Yet, she thought to herself, trembling with the beginnings of hysteria, she hadn’t colluded, she  _hadn’t colluded_ , she had been as much as a victim of the rest of them, only her wounds weren’t as obvious, and she had prevailed,  _she had prevailed_ , had avenged all those children dead in Japan, in England, in the rest of Europe, in the  _rest of the world_ , and for the first time in months, she would be able to sleep without the cries of those children ringing in her ears because she had helped, she had helped the Master get to where he was, and she knew she was guilty, oh she knew, but she had taken responsibility, and so had he, and she had  _done it!_

 

She knows her hysterical ramblings are audible when everyone looks at her. She giggles helplessly, looking over the dead body of the Master, her work you know.

 

Above her head—when did she sink to the floor?—she hears murmured voices going about madness, and a final reaction to all the stress and fear and guilt of the Year That Never Was, but she only giggles and rocks back and forth.

 

\--

 

She’s tried in a closed trial, with no jury, just a magistrate.

 

She’s found guilty of war crimes.

 

\--

 

Still, she considers as she counts down to when she can throw the potion, she’s won back her honor, and throws it, feeling her body finally give in to the consuming darkness, and she falls into it’s formless shadows with relief—at last, there will be no more pain.

 

\--

 

_Here lies the Honorable Lucy Cole, who did much wrong, but avenged it with much right._

_May she find some measure of peace._

_  
_

**Author's Note:**

> I like to moonlight as a Women's Studies major. Part of this sprang from that.
> 
> The other part sprang from: what the hell happened to make Lucy Saxon go from being in love with Harry Saxon to willing to shoot the Master? Also based on that she looked kinda stoned and out of it during the entire affair aboard the Valiant. I tried to write it in little snippets rather than a complete one-shot.


End file.
